Cover Me!

SPEAKER_00 0:00

We had access to everything growing up. And there was no locking things up, there was no filtering of conversations, with our dad being a cop. We had at the end of a hallway a closet that had guns in it. But at the sign of the times, people drove around with gun racks in the back of their trucks. That was all totally common. For us, no filtering, no restrictions.

SPEAKER_01 0:29

We had access to stuff that probably we shouldn't have had access to, including even television. We had talked about it a while back when you and I were just talking. In our basement, I had cable TV and had HBO. I think I had one of the first hookups in The Magic City. I think there were 12 channels at that time. And most of them were just kind of these informational channels that weren't real. Cinemax After Dark. So no, that hadn't been invented yet. But I did watch a lot of HBO movies. The 1970s, a different time. Back then, guns were left unlocked. Now, if you did that, you could get arrested. You could get in big trouble.

SPEAKER_00 1:04

One thing I'll say that was almost a perfect storm for disaster in our house was access and we were unsupervised. So not only did our dad work a lot of times four to midnight, perfect storm. Perfect storm. And our mom worked till like 10, 10:30 at night. No, I've called it before that we were like the original latchkey kids. And again, not separation anxiety, not crying about any of that, but you would think after this one time that they probably would never leave us home alone again. We're home, alone, and we are unattended because they are in Winnipeg for the weekend picking up our cousin from Germany. You think everything's okay, here we are, totally unattended.

SPEAKER_01 1:51

This is the original home alone story, Judy. We are home alone. They did not learn their lesson, and we were home alone. We got into everything and anything unsupervised. And we're talking about that closet at the end of the hallway where dad kept his guns. Outside of our dining room, there's this hallway that leads to the bedrooms, and there's a coke closet. And you open up that coke closet, and the upper shelf of that are all kinds of guns. You name it, it's up there. They're loaded, the safety's not on, they're ready to get the floor.

SPEAKER_00 2:22

Sniper rifles, there's everything. Yeah. Yeah. You were in that closet every day. But before we go to the guns, there was the ashtray.

SPEAKER_01 2:28

Well, I gotta tell you right now, Judy, we love our sister. However, there's a couple of stories we're gonna share where when we were kids, and I think a lot of it goes to the fact that you and I are 15 months apart, not twins, but you know, we hung out, we played together, we played sports almost well, always in school, you know, one of us, you know, was only a grade away, where our sister was a couple years older, and sometimes maybe not nice to her that we should have been. And there's this one story, our sister's laying on the couch, and there's this crystal ashtray that probably weighs five pounds. This thing is pure crystal. It's heavy. And I remember joking and kind of holding it above our sister's head and pretending I was gonna, I don't know what I was gonna do, but pretending I was gonna do something evil with that, with that ashtray. And even though I kind of shied away from it, it still happened. And I don't know how, if it was like an accidental slip or if I was dared into doing it or whatever. But uh, you're giving me kind of a weird look on that one. But hey, every once in a while hey, once in a while, double dog dare, and I would do something. Totally. This probably wasn't one of those, but I accidentally, and I'm highlighting the word accidentally, dropped the ashtray on our sister's head.

SPEAKER_00 3:46

Do not try that at home, and thankfully she was okay.

SPEAKER_01 3:49

She was totally okay with all the stories we're gonna tell, including guns and other weapons. Nobody was killed, nobody was harmed. Although we might have tried to harm people, actually, there was no harm done.

SPEAKER_00 4:00

So one thing that was funny is that was just the beginning of the shenanigans of the weekend at Winnipeg and weekend at Bernie's, whatever. This is weekend at Winnipeg, what's happening in Minant, North Dakota? So we think, and we were, and just for folks so they understand, sign of the times, what were we watching on TV? We were watching policewoman, you know, police story, Hill Street Blues, it was before that, right? But we are watching, you know, 11 Mary Six, 13 Zebra 5, right? We were watching all that stuff.

SPEAKER_01 4:33

Well, because our dad was a cop. We're like into cop shows, and they're into cop shows. And again, nothing filtered. Some of these shows, probably not the greatest shows for little kids to be watching, but we're up on a Wednesday night. Most kids are in bed by, you know, eight or nine o'clock. Well, at nine o'clock, you and I were rearing up to the TV to watch Hawaii 5-0.

SPEAKER_00 4:52

Yeah, we were because again, nobody was home. So we could watch whatever we wanted. So lo and behold, we hear a noise outside. What do we do? Certainly we're well trained because we've watched all these things on TV. We know exactly what to do. What do we do? We go to the closet at the end of the hallway and we arm ourselves. Sniper rifle, nine millimeter, it could have been a 357 Magnum, some other things. We're running around outside, loaded guns, dive rolling in the backyard. Cover me! And then rolling around the gun. And I think you say it best. We're clearing a crime scene.

SPEAKER_01 5:32

Just short of bulletproof vests and full tactical gear, you and I were armed to the T. We were clearing our backyard and making sure, because we thought we heard something. We thought somebody was out there. And again, later we find out that's just a noise we heard, or maybe a dog or whatever it is. But you run out to a tree, yell, cover me, and then I'm aiming and watching and making sure nobody's shooting at you that this is happening in my nut, North Dakota. Well, then it's my turn. And I'm like, cover me. And I run over to the next tree. Through this whole process, we end up basically clearing our backyard of potential danger. Here we are as young teenagers, and we're carrying weapons. And again, short of bulletproof vests and tactical gear. In fact, if our dad would have had an AK-47, we would have been out there in the yard with that, God forbid.

SPEAKER_00 6:22

Yes, and would have loved to have had that AK-47 and our fingers were on the triggers. I mean, we are, and that's how we're rolling around on the ground. Totally unsafe. And good news is we weren't pointing them at each other. What would we have done if we would have seen somebody? Or God forbid a neighbor walks by. That would have been like if a wild pig went by. You know what I mean? Which which happened from time to time there.

SPEAKER_01 6:49

Judy, the start of the make my day law was in Minot, North Dakota in our backyard.

SPEAKER_00 6:54

So that's not where the night ended. One of the things that we did is we must have switched out because they had like I said, there wasn't a gun that he didn't have. We had 22s, I remember Pearl Handle, 22, like platinum, cool gun. He had, which by the way, was like an adorable gun. You had to put it in your hand and you had to shoot it at some point, which we'll get to in a second. But he also had BB guns, not like the Christmas story BB gun, but he had like an air pistol that you loaded with BBs. And for some reason, that thing fascinated the crap out of me. So I'm shooting that gun everywhere. I'm shooting at the neighbors, like the there was this, I don't know, elm tree or something, but I'm like shooting this. And then I hear this bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep. And don't think I'm like, well, those leaves are kind of loud, you know, that I'm picking off. You know, I'm picking off all kinds. I didn't shoot at any animals or whatever, but I'm shooting at a lot of different things with that BB gun, not thinking what it might do. So I don't know why I decided to upgrade into that good look in 22, but I remember I go get the 22 and I the nice pearl handle. It fit nicely in my little hands at the time. And so I walked to the front of the house, I shout my sister's name, and then I fire the gun. And would I, you know, I don't think I was shooting at her. I don't know what I thought it would do because we had really thick windows, right? So I thought it would kind of bounce off of there, whatever. But it it actually did, and listen, I was a terrible shot. So it put a hole in the window. Again, not what I expected at all to happen. Because, you know, one, I didn't want to hurt my sister, obviously. But one of the things that was really crazy, now we're full on panic mode because I'm like, oh my god, our folks are on their way home. What are we gonna do? We have to make it look like a crime scene. We put rocks everywhere because it's gonna align. Yep, stage the crime scene because that's the other thing that we learned from all the TV shows is totally stage the crime scene. We are outside putting rocks by the window, whatever. I don't even know what you know what we thought that was gonna do. About midnight or one o'clock in the morning, or folks come home and my god, you guys, something happened there. We heard all kinds of noises outside, and people were throwing rocks at our windows. And look what happened, you know, and they're examining that hole. Like, oh my dad's a detective, he probably should have known. But good news, they bought the story for a while.

SPEAKER_01 9:26

Well, in North Dakota, some crime scenes get covered by nature.

SPEAKER_00 9:30

Yes, the frozen tundra of North Dakota is not just in Green Bay, it is absolutely in North Dakota. So for months it would be covered. The next day I saw our neighbor's dad out there on the side of the house. And he is, I know, I'm just horrified. So those babies that bleep bleep bleep that was putting little holes in their window, which I had no idea. I know. Worst neighbors ever. So there's these little holes in their window, and he's looking at it, never said a word. We were like the devil. And it's funny because the family brand is totally not part of that. You know what I mean? Because we had this image of being the perfect family of five, and it's not shooting out the neighbor's window, and it certainly isn't shooting out our own window.

SPEAKER_01 10:19

Judy, we were the neighbors from hell. And again, the family brand was cops, family, cop kids, everybody following the rules. No, no, that wasn't us. We were getting in trouble. We were devil kids from the get-go, pulling out guns, shooting out windows. One other story about our neighbor's house that also involves you, they had this French drain that came out from the side of their house that would keep the water away from the foundation of their house. Well, right next to this plastic French drain, which by the way was above ground. It wasn't the traditional underground. You could move this thing. It was made out of almost like a garbage bag, but you know, you could move this thing where you wanted the water to drain to. Well, right next to that was their window well for their basement. And I remember you, as maybe a joke or just some sort of whacked out evilness, took that French drain and actually put it in the window well. So the next time it rained, their basement flooded. You're welcome, you know.

SPEAKER_00 11:17

So, and again he says nothing. Nothing. I mean, never once complained. So crazy. Family brand, totally protected.

SPEAKER_01 11:29

I think when we moved, they threw a party because they were actually happy that we were no longer in the neighborhood. They were clear of any future episodes or any impending danger from their next door neighbors walking around with loaded weapons and putting French drains in the the basement window well and throwing parties and ragers and all that kind of stuff. They were fantastic, you know, nice conservative family. Never said a word, never said a peep, and you know, they could have.

SPEAKER_00 11:58

And there was a another time, and I know you like to affectionately call it the Woodstock Party, but there was a five-day rager at our house when again our folks left us to go out of town. This time for like a week while our dad is at like lie detector school. We have a five-day rager, and there's people streaking around the pool. And by the way, this is even the worst of it, but there's people streaking around the pool, and one guy stark naked who wasn't we weren't supposed to be hanging out with his kid, bant. Like, don't even look at this kid. And he was at our party and he was on the diving board stark naked at 6 a.m. And our neighbors, the ones that we've terrorized, they actually had grandma over visiting. So grandma is like looking out the window at six o'clock in the morning, and is she seeing what she's seeing on the diving board, which is some, you know, high school kids totally nude on there. And then that guy is screaming at her. He's like, What are you looking at, you wrinkled up old fart? And then he's like, and now she's got her glasses on because she must have gone down and put her glasses on. But again, chaos.

SPEAKER_01 13:02

Judy, he's out there stark naked, big Jim and the twins, swinging in the wind. Our neighbors peering out the window, like you said, just staring at him, and he's mouthing off at her. To our neighbor's credit, never said a word about it. We had to eventually go apologize for that. Judy, real quick, one other story that involves our sister, and again, poor sister that took the brunt of a lot of our punishment or evilness or stuff that we got into. And, you know, she tried to keep us out of some of it, but again, you and I were kind of twin devils, twin Tasmanian devils running around, wreaking havoc at a young age, and she was there kind of just trying to, you know, do her own thing, and we were, you know, getting into trouble. Well, one story, Judy, we had this in our garage. We had this broom, a wooden broom with a wooden handle, and and you could unscrew the handle part, this like six-foot handle. You could unscrew that out of the out of the bottom part of the broom. I don't even know why I was doing this, but you know, I'd be sweeping the garage going, oh, that's that's that can screw it up. Well, so I thought, well, why don't I make this into a spear and sharpen the end? So I took that wooden handle out and I went out on the sidewalk and rubbed it back and forth like, you know, a couple hundred times until that end turned into a point. Not knowing that, you know, this broom handle was now rendered useless. It's never gonna screw back hit him the broom. I basically ruined that. But guess what? I got this awesome spear. And I don't even know where I got this idea that I wanted to throw a spear. I don't know if I'm watching Gilligan's Island or some other shows or whatever. I think you had made a comment at one point that, you know, maybe I was interested in throwing javelin. I don't know. So anyway, I make this spear and I'm in the garage, not proud of it, but we'll tell you again, nobody was injured.

SPEAKER_00 14:50

Don't try it at home.

SPEAKER_01 14:51

But anyway, our sister comes through the outside garage door into the garage. I'm standing in the garage with the spear, and I throw this spear. And Judy, it's a perfect toss, except for my aims off, thank God. But it goes it shoots right by our sister's head and goes boom into the door and sticks in the door. And it's just sitting there. It's stopping the door. There's a big hole in the door. Meanwhile, our sister's like looking, going, did that just happen? And I'm like, sorry, you know, trying out my new spear. I don't know what happened. Well, thank God again, she didn't get hurt, nothing happened. However, now, similar to your story with the hole in the window, we have a hole in the garage door. I have to come clean on this. There's no hiding this, there's no waiting out the winter or anything like that. You know, dad's like, where'd that hole come from? And I'm like, and again, I've got the evidence because we've got the broom handle that no longer fits in the broom, the bottom part of the broom, and still looks like a spear. And I had to admit to dad, I was like, Yeah, I made a spear. I I left out the sister part, but I made a spear and I threw it into the garage door. And he is livid, just probably thinking to himself, what is wrong with this kid?

SPEAKER_00 16:07

What kind of animal lives in this house? Well, and again, I don't even know what made you think of making a spear and then to throw it. Who doesn't? By the way, I think that expression somebody could lose an eye probably came from our house. Crazy that that happened. Well, and again, in the spirit of being like the worst neighbors ever, too. We had the neighbors behind us.

SPEAKER_01 16:29

Judy, are you gonna talk about the rock fight?

SPEAKER_00 16:32

I was because we started off by throwing rocks at the neighbor kits, which is horrible.

SPEAKER_01 16:40

Just horrible. Well, they're smaller than us. The fact that we're throwing rocks at these little kids is really weird. And I think their mom and dad finally got involved or came out and said, Hey, what's going on? And thank God we didn't hit anybody. So again, as we keep saying, no animals were harmed in the filming of this podcast.

SPEAKER_00 16:59

Well, I don't even know why we thought that was okay. And, you know, we ended up building like a six-foot fence with, you know, I guess sharp points on the end of it. Now that I think about the irony of that is kind of funny. But at some point, the rock fight, we turned against each other.

SPEAKER_01 17:19

Well, we had this fun game where one of us would stand stationary and the other kid would run through the yard at a high rate of speed, and then we would kind of timing patterns, almost like you're trying to throw a football at a, you know, speedy receiver coming across the middle of the field. Except for it was a speedy kid running across the field, and we're trying to drill him with a rock. You're running through the yard. I clip you in the side of the head, it splits your ear wide open. This is a freakout moment. Again, our folks are away. Again, this is trouble that you and I are getting into when we're left home alone, and your ear is bleeding like a stuck pig. What do I do? I do what I normally do. I ran. I ran and hit in my room. And I I prayed and hoped for the best, just left you alone to bleed out.

SPEAKER_00 18:05

You did. You left me to bleed out. And by the way, I don't know, future quarterback, future serial killer, but I was bleeding. Who knew that ears bleed that much? But I have like washcloth after washcloth getting soaked up with blood. You have to call our dad at work to come home. Take me to the hospital. And I end up getting stitches, but it is bleeding like crazy. But good news for you.

SPEAKER_01 18:28

You did not throw me under the bus, Judy.

SPEAKER_00 18:30

I did not throw you under the bus. I said I fell in the garage, hit my head on the tip of offense material that was all in the garage. And what's crazy about that is you would have thought with my dad being, you know, deputy dog or detective, that he could have been able to say, hey, why isn't there any blood here on the crime scene? Unless we said we cleaned it up. It might must have been that.

SPEAKER_01 18:50

Again, I was hiding in my room, and all I remember is that you and dad were at the hospital. I thought maybe I had killed you. Now there was so much blood, I didn't know. I'm getting ready to get into massive trouble. Well, when we come home, I think that you even had gotten like an ice cream cone, or dad had kind of gotten you something, and you come sauntering in, your ears stitched up, dad's in an okay mood, and all of a sudden it took me a couple minutes to realize, hmm, I'm getting away with this.

SPEAKER_00 19:18

I thought you were gonna say I didn't get an ice cream cone.

SPEAKER_01 19:21

Judy, at this point, I'm so freaked out that you know, I'll give up an ice cream cone not to get grounded.

SPEAKER_00 19:26

Well, it's kind of funny. I I think where did I ever get my fight or flight? Because I'm definitely a flight person. I think I must have got that from you. I think that totally runs in our family. Another thing that's kind of crazy about us growing up is whenever they would leave us, you know, the rock fight was when they left to go to work for the day, right? So that was just kind of a normal day for us to injure each other and to maim each other. But the Winnipeg weekend was kind of crazy because we were never allowed ever to have any friends over at the house. Not once, no friends, no slumber parties at our house. We and even going to slumber parties at somebody else's house, that was pretty rare. You know, you got your own goddamn bed. Why would you need to go to, you know, somebody else's bed? But we always got a list. Like, you know, what are the plants? Uh here's $20, you know what I mean, in case we wanted to walk down to the store. No friends over, no this, no that. Just a long, depressing list of things we couldn't do.

SPEAKER_01 20:25

Well, the friend thing was weird because everybody had friends over after school. Let's go to Billy's house or Todd's house or whoever's house and hang out, and you wait for the parents to come home from work. And we weren't allowed to do any of that. We had to go home. We had our list or kind of the rules to follow. Also, you know, this is my not North Dakota. Again, 1970s. We're growing up, no locked doors. I never had a key to our house, did you? Nope, never. Not a not one single key. Judy, it makes sense. Obviously, we have a swimming pool later, and we don't want anybody to come over and drown, and our folks are concerned about that, as as they should be, so I get that. But even before that, or even outside of the pool, we weren't allowed to have kids over, which was kind of weird, and also kind of kept us a little bit sheltered, I think, from some of our classmates because you didn't get that after school bonding. Also, again, close to the vest family brand, where our mom and dad were always about keeping everything close to the vest and not talking about our business. And I remember one of our dad's favorite saying, you know, was always, oh, if if Mark walked off, you know, a bridge, would you do the same thing? You know, and I always thought to myself, well, if it looked fun and that's what everybody was doing, maybe I would freaking do that, Dad. You know, but you know, you can't.

SPEAKER_00 21:47

Mark dropped an astery on his sister's head, would you? Well, guess where Mark got the idea. It is funny because the family brand, and I think part of that was because they didn't want anybody, and it started very early with some of these things. They didn't want anybody. To see what we had. And the best way to do that is just to keep people out. One of the other things, too, that I also remember, besides the brand of not being able to have people over, again, we didn't talk about our business. We didn't do anything. But we wanted to give the appearance of like that perfect family. It was to protect my dad's job. We're not those bad kids. So we had to always kind of set an example. But one thing that's kind of crazy too is I know we talked about the Winnipeg trip. But the Winnipeg trip, it ended up that we had multiple detectives in our house. And I know you always say we had some houses have bad cop, bad cop. And our dad was the only cop because our mom was like an interior designer. But it was we had bad cop, bad cop. But I'm gonna say she was probably the real detective. She was suspicious of everything and everyone. And it's no no surprise that when the snow melted from that weekend Winnipeg trap, I that she was the one that found the bullet casing. And all of a sudden, I heard Don, which you'll hear a lot in this podcast. Don! You know, and in German she would tell them to come over. And she's holding up the bullet casing, and she said, I know what happened to the window. Now they didn't know that it was us, and they didn't know that it was their own bullet casing.

SPEAKER_01 23:26

Well, that was until they ran the DNA test on the bullet, Judy, and found your fingerprints and DNA. Oh no, I'm kidding. The DNA had not been invented yet. But one other quick detective Will Amina story, because you're absolutely right. She found out more than our dad did. Our dad, you know, maybe busy being a detective at work and done when he gets home. But Will Amina, our mom, I'll give you a quick story, snuck off to Rugby, North Dakota one night to stay in a hotel with a friend that I went to high school with. And I was supposed to be working all night as a dishwasher at the truck stop. The friend and I drove to rugby, hung out, snuck out a little bag of weed. We had some alcohol. In rugby, North Dakota, we rent a hotel room. I don't even know how the heck we got a hotel room. Well, guess what? When you're teenagers and you get a hotel room, does that last or does that no? We got kicked out of our hotel room in the middle of the night. Well, one of the things, and I hate to talk about weed, we had this little bag of weed. And I thought, Judy, the best place to hide that would be under the hood of the car on the motor. Like just stick it somewhere under the hood of the car. Nobody's gonna find it. Well, guess what? You know, a couple of stoners leaving rugby, North Dakota in the middle of the night because we got kicked out of the hotel room, start driving down the highway when one of us realizes, hey, what happened to that little bag of weed? And it's like, oh, oh, and then we pull over. Well, there's no bag of weed. It had burned up or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 24:51

So uh that's not how I thought that was gonna end. I thought it was gonna end by it started burning the weed in the in the engine. And then the weed totally. That's what I totally not the uh ending that I expected.

SPEAKER_01 25:05

So the cabin of the car got completely smoked out, Judy. It was Cheech and Chong, up in smoke. So home alone and up in smoke before any of those ever came out happened at the Schneideki household. So I get away with this because again, the folks think I'm working at the truck stop. It was about a week later, where our mom is in the basement, she's in the laundry room, and all of a sudden I hear her freaking out. Up Don, Don! She's upset, she's pissed off. And what happened was in my back pocket, because again, this is Donnie not covering his tracks, not cleaning the crime scene. I wasn't as good as you as cleaning the crime scene in my back pocket. She found a hotel receipt for Rugby, North Dakota. All hell broke loose. I got in massive trouble, and that was grounding number 17 out of twenty that I had that year. Not I mean, that's how often I got grounded. Again.

SPEAKER_00 26:02

Nothing ever got by her. Nothing.